2014 Mid Atlantic Robotics Championship

The team completed in the
Mid-Atlantic Robotics Championship at Lehigh University where we went toe to
toe (or actually bumper to bumper) with the best robots for Pennsylvania, New
Jersey and Delaware. The top 55 robots in the area were invited to
attend. This was the third straight year we were ranked high enough to
receive an invite. We are very grateful to all of our sponsors, especially the Mid-Atlantic Robotics organization, for their financial support that allowed us to attend,

The students did some fund
raising of their owe by asking for loose change in decorated Piggy Banks.
Here are some examples of the banks. This was a lot of fun for the
students and it raised a good amount of funds.

We performed very well at
Lehigh. During the first day of the competition the teams can work to
improve their robots. We first replaced a broker encoder. This
critical component is used to determine when to turn off the shooter
motor. We then replaced all six of the robot wheels. The wheels had
worn down and were losing traction. We also made some programming changes
including adding a ‘panic’ button to the controls that allow the driver to shut
down the shooter motor in the event of another encoder failure. (Luckily
is was not needed.)

Here is our robot on the field battlingthe opponents.

We finished the first day with a
record of 6 and 2. (We actually were 7-1 but there was a scoring error in
one of our matches.) Once again we were outstanding in the Autonomous
phase of the game where the robots move and shoot without assistance from the
drive team. Here you can see one of our shots going into the high goal.
We made 9 in a row at one point.

The competition at this level is
fierce. Late in the day we had one of our bumpers broken despite being
made of ¾ inch thick wood. Teams played tight defense, but because of the
quality of the teams involved, high scores were the norm. We only failed
to reach the 100 point level once during the weekend. Here are some balls
flying over the truss for a 10 point score.

We finished the competition with
a record of 7 and 5 which ranked us 19th. Unfortunately we were not
selected for the elimination phase of the competition. The event was
especially beneficial as we were able interact the best teams in the region and
gather some great ideas that we can use next year. Here are some more
pictures from the event.